Hindu Temples in Go Thap Dong Thap Province,Vietnam

Abstract

So far we know that Indian culture had a very much influence in that of Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam. Especially, Hindu culture relfects through architectural and sculptural arts as well as other aspects of life.In Vietnam, we found that OcEo culture belonging to Funnan kingdom in Southern Vietnam shows deep imprints of Inian culture underlying in its architectural and sculptural arts. This comes into light thanks to archaeologists, who have excavated and unearthed many archaeological sites of this culture located in the South of Vietnam.This article tries to prove that in OcEo culture, there are certain kind of temples which are exactly the same as that in India. And they also underwent the same stage of development as that of India. These findings based on my own excavations in archaeological site of Go Thap, Dong Thap province, Vietnam. I have spent seven years excavating this site and found that these architectural structures were Hindu temples, not tombs as claimed by ?àoLinhCôn. Besides, I strongly claim that the archaeological site of Go Thap was temples of Surya, Vishnu and Shiva based on their objects found at the site; moreover, Anna Aleksandra Slaczka also posed a question that “The brick structures of Go Thap- tombs or temples?”[1]andshe proved that it was temple not tomb.